Merry Christmas to all!!!

We had a great Christmas as usual, doing most of our usual Christmas things.  Here we our picking out our tree.  How cute our we? (except me, no makeup, don't look too closely.)

This Christmas we tried out a new tradition. In our advent calender, instead of candy, we put little tags that said fun things that we would do that day. Things like have breakfast at a restraurant, go see Christmas lights, go see Santa, make crafts, etc. It was a good time and we had fun all month long.

Here we are at some local Christmas lights. Annie fits just perfectly in my coat.

The best part of all was that Jared's sister, Meredith, her husband PJ, and their kids, Caitlyn and Bradyn came to visit from Oklahoma. It had been about a year and a half since we'd last seen them, so it was very exciting.

We did lots of fun stuff. We sat around, we ate lots of good food (PJ is an amazing cook). One night we went up to Salt Lake to see the Christmas lights. We also went to a planetarium and saw a cheesy Japanese film. There was a cool moon landing re-creation.

We then went to an asian restaurant, Annie loved the chow mein.

Then to the christmas lights on the most crowded night I've ever seen at Temple Square. It was still beautiful.

Jared went to the park with all the youngsters.

Jack fell at one point, these pictures turned out pretty funny.

We made gingerbread houses.

We played late night games.

Christmas morning was great. Although I did the same stupid thing that I do every year. I get all excited and forget to take pictures. See how excited I am?

Some of the highlights of the gifts were scooters for the kids, which they then rode around the kitchen for a few days.

Annie got to play with paper and bows and crawl around and pick up tiny things off the floor to eat. She also got some sweet jammies and toys with lights and noises.

She got lots of attention for the week.

Jack got a lot of awesome car stuff.

Lily got a pretty charm bracelet, stuffed horse with a purse, an kids ice cream maker.

We got a fish tank. This has been the biggest fiasco ever. Long story short: Jared bought a tank and stuff on KSL (like Craigslist) for too much money, it cracked, he fixed it but ended up taking it to work. Then he bought another tank, and a million dollars later, we've killed off a dozen fish and have every type of chemical to fix it and he's had to work on it every single day.

Jared got a Modern Warfare 3 and clothes, as always.

And best of all is my new camera. I got a DSLR (a Canon t2i) and I love it. I still don't know how to use it properly, but I'm working on it and I'm going to take a class with my sister, who also got the same camera for Christmas. The pictures I've been taking are already 10x better than with our point and shoot. This is something I've been wanting for years and years, so I'm super excited about it.

All in all it was a great holiday.